Casa Rossa: Summary and book reviews of Casa Rossa by Francesca Marciano, plus links to an excerpt from Casa Rossa and a biography of Francesca Marciano.
Casa Rossa
by Francesca Marciano
Hardcover: Aug 2002,
352 pages.
Paperback: Oct 2003,
352 pages.
A mesmerizing story of three generations of a twentieth-century Italian family.
Casa Rossa—a farmhouse in Puglia owned by the Strada family—is being sold. And as she packs up the house, Alina Strada pieces together the history of her family's past, and of the lives of three extraordinary Strada women.
Grandmother Renée, a beautiful Tunisian, is wife, muse, and model for Alina's painter grandfather, but she leaves him and flees to Nazi Germany. Alina's mother, Alba, marries a melancholic screenwriter and lives la dolce vita in 1950s Rome until her husband's mysterious death. Isabella, Alina's sister and once her best friend, finds herself drawn to a dangerous ideology in the 1970s; the sisters' love for one another soon shifts to a betrayal of which they can never speak. As these individual lives unfold, so does the larger one—the story of a family whose secrets collide with history.
From the duplicity of Italy's role in the thirties to the dark years of terrorism in our own times, and moving from Rome and Southern Italy to New England and New York City, Casa Rossa is a brilliant weave of lives and memories: an enthralling novel.
New York Times
Intensely romantic, [with] a closeness and perceptiveness worthy of Flaubert.
Chicago Tribune
Marciano writes with consuming, abiding passion.
New York Times Book Review
Impressive… Wise and beautifully written.
USA Today
Remarkable… sensuous… compellingly readable. Makes you feel as if you've come back from someplace very far away.
San Francisco Chronicle Book Review
Breathtaking… Marciano writes with grace and knowledge.
Kirkus Reviews
An engaging tale, simply told and with a measure of wit. A high-end soap opera to be enjoyed and forgotten. Take it to the beach.
Publishers Weekly
The intricate complications may challenge belief, but the author imperturbably weaves them together into a glamorous, romantic whole.
Library Journal - Robin Nesbitt
A good read for fans of multigenerational sagas and modern Italian history, this is recommended for most libraries.
Times Literary Supplement (London)
A powerful first novel… Marciano evokes a spirit of place that is cathartic rudely, exultingly alive.
Recent Reader Reviews
Rated of 5
by Sophie Annesley Casa Rossa This book is an incredible journey through the eyes of three generations; you travel through Rome and the Southern Italian counrtyside to hear the tales of one family set against the back drop of Italy in WW2, the terrorism of the seventies through... Read More
Rated of 5
by paola romagnani
Casa Rossa is a great book. It is simply brilliant. It made me cry and laugh and I could not put the book down, I read it all in three days. I'm Italian but have not lived the 70s, Casa Rossa has led me into that period with such an intensity, all... Read More
Set in Italy during the dramatic finale of World War II, Russell's ambitious and engrossing novel tells the little known story of how Italian citizens saved more than 43,000 Jews during the last 20 months of WWII.
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Kirkus Reviews
of 5
by Sophie Annesley
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